PANEL GETS POINTERS ON DISASTER REDINESS

Getting the business community involved is crucial to planning for disasters.

Sherman Greer, director of the Emergency Management Agency for Evansville, Ind., and surrounding Vanderburgh County, brought that message to Cape Girardeau's disaster resistant community steering committee Wednesday.

"Our whole job in emergency management is to get people back to work as soon as possible," Greer said, and businesses are beginning to recognize that fact.

"When those people are not working, the insurance companies are not going to get those premiums. The banks are not going to get those payments made," he said.

For that reason Greer and Roger Lehman, building commissioner for Evansville and Vanderburgh County and a member of its disaster resistant community committee, told Cape Girardeau's committee that the business community needs to have input into a disaster response plan.

After the Oklahoma City federal building bombing, several businesses went bankrupt because they couldn't get to their facilities or resources while the area was cordoned off for weeks by investigators and emergency personnel, Lehman said.

"Those kinds of factors are not really considered in governmental response planning," he said.

"We can shelter people, we can take care of them, we can save their lives. But then what happens?" Lehman asked.

Employers need to plan in advance for what might happen to their businesses if roads are shut down, bridges are washed out or employees are left homeless by fires, floods, earthquakes or other catastrophes, Lehman said.

Involvement in community emergency management planning can help ensure businesses' needs are recognized, he said.

Evansville, nationally recognized for its disaster preparedness efforts, has been designated a disaster resistant community by the state and is awaiting that designation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Cape Girardeau was designated Missouri's first disaster resistant community Tuesday, and the city hopes to earn the same designation from FEMA.

Evansville-Vanderburgh County has set up a coalition of businesses, and that coalition will help businesses map out their emergency management initiatives, Lehman said.

He said Evansville-Vanderburgh County began its emergency management efforts about a year ago and has identified several key areas that need to be addressed.

In addition to recruiting businesses to help with planning, community education is critical, said Lehman. It's also important to give residents and businesses good incentives to buy into disaster preparedness efforts, Lehman said. Pointing out that such precautions as strapping down water heaters can help cut insurance rates is such an incentive, he said.

Greer said cities also need to look to the future when mapping emergency preparedness plans and to take into consideration what kind of growth is planned for the next 15 to 20 years.

Emergency management officials need to work with agencies like the American Red Cross to provide public education on preparedness, Greer said. And communities have to know what hazards they face, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, winds, floods or hazardous-materials spills, he said.

"There's always the thing that we've overlooked for years, that we can't do anything about, and the reality has come that we have to try to do something," Greer said.

It isn't always "the big one" that communities face, he said. He pointed to the scare earlier this decade when the late Iben Browning predicted a major earthquake along the New Madrid Fault.

"We don't know when it's going to happen, but we have to prepare for it," Greer said. "In the meantime, while we're waiting for the big one, what about the flooding that's going to happen? What about the tornadoes that come through? What about the hazardous materials? If you can plan for the big one, the small ones, the ones in between are going to fall into place."

Buck Katt, director of Missouri's State Emergency Management Agency, said Missouri is looking at the disaster resistant community program on a broader scale than just Cape Girardeau. The state is looking at working with the Department of Economic Development's Community Betterment program to help with the disaster preparedness initiative, Katt said.

Cape Girardeau's steering committee is "very much in the organizational phase," said Walter Denton, assistant to city manager Michael Miller and coordinator of the city's disaster resistant community efforts.

The next steps will be to recruit people to serve on the committee and to set up subcommittees to study needs for different areas such as community land use and business, hazard and risk assessment, Denton said. The committee's goal is to set up an emergency management mechanism to help reduce loss of life and property in the event of a disaster, he said.